Weird Sisters
by dangerousdame
Summary: Vignettes about how each of the brides first died, and what they saw in Mina.


You've heard this story before: a poor girl and a rich boy fall in love, and their union leaves her ruined. He can go back to his rich and lovely wife, while she wanders the wilds and wails. If she is with child, so much the better- her position is all the more tragic. She is forced to end her own life, and her family weeps. Even the rich boy weeps in secret, thinking on the wrong he did her.

You've heard this story, and so had Florina.

It all seemed so romantic, somehow, despite the pain. Nevermind that her seducer wasn't the type to weep, nor that she wasn't sure she'd have married him if it had been possible. And the nature of their consummation had been more embarrassing than poetic; he always left her exhausted, and forced to wear high collars to hide the marks from his teeth. More beastly than royal was this nobleman, but if their affair couldn't be romantic, at least its end could be.

When Florina awoke from her poison-induced slumber, she found herself in an open coffin, staring straight into the cold eyes of her lover. Her death didn't feel quite so romantic anymore.

_When Florina saw the Englishwoman, she saw a distraction. With each new bride Dracula brought home, he paid less attention to his simple peasant girl. Rather than resent these distractions, Florina welcomed them. They meant she could spend the night roaming the castle or even the courtyard when he allowed it, rather than have to tend to his whims and desires. He wasn't cruel to her, but neither did he bring her the joy he once had, despite the high collars and exhaustion. When Florina died, her desire for him died with her, and all that remained was disgust._

Margareta was the loveliest of his brides, and the cleverest as well. She had been with him long enough to see others come and go, when they disobeyed him and were slaughtered for it or else driven from his home for reasons he would not explain. Florina was kept out of some sort of duty to the mother of his children, Rozalia for the near-human lust she stirred in him, but Margareta was the one he loved and respected.

(Tell me another one! Florina might have said, if she'd had a sense of humor.)

While still alive she'd been a witch, or at least a woman with enough money and time on her hands to suffer boredom. Charms and potions were a fun way to pass the time and make herself feel important, and to feel a sense of power beyond her station. They'd said similar things of him, and when he made her an offer beneath the moonlight, she never even thought of refusing him.

Child murder. Cannibalism. Demon worship. To think she'd balked at such things while human...

_When Margareta saw the Englishwoman, she saw a way of pleasing her lord. She wasn't threatened by her, because that would mean she had anything to be threatened by. Nothing her lord wanted could be wrong, because that would have meant she'd have to challenge him, and not doing so would have meant she was afraid. If she simply assented to anything he desired with a smile, that meant she was happy. To not do so would have meant that all those years ago she'd made a terrible, terrible mistake._

Rozalia seldom spoke to the others, or to anyone. It had been so long since she died that she'd almost forgotten how it had happened. She remembered him at her window, remembered how cold his skin had felt against her living flesh, but whom she had been or even whether she'd invited him inside were lost to the dust of ages.

The early days of her death she remembered more clearly. She was disobedient, and so he'd had to teach her. She remembered being bound in her grave as shovelfulls of dirt fell on top of her, and even though she had no need to breath she'd still gasped and writhed in her bonds and begged for mercy.

There was no point in remembering if it only brought up things like that. Better to live in the moment, when the perpetual chill of death could be eased with hot blood and kisses, whomever they belonged to.

_When Rozalia saw the Englishwoman, she saw many things- a sister, a friend, a lover. She stood on the precipice between life and death, where she was most beautiful; warm enough to entice but cold enough to withstand her lord's embrace. For a moment she was new and exciting, and Rozalia could almost pretend she didn't anticipate her growing as cold as Florina and Margareta and Rozalia herself._


End file.
